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from the what-happens-underground-stays-underground dept.
girlwhowaspluggedout writes:
"The US Border Patrol has a new tool in its battle against the tunnels that are used to smuggle in drugs from Mexico. Since the cartels' diggers operate outside the range of the agency's cameras, motions detectors, and drones, and because filling the tunnels with concrete hasn't stopped the smugglers, the US Border Patrol now regularly employs robots to search through the underground drug trafficking routes.
The Border Patrol operates four remote-controlled robots along the US-Mexico border. Three of the four are assigned to its station in Nogales, Arizona, the final destination for most of the tunnels that have been discovered so far near the southern border. The agency's robots, which include Applied Research Associates' Pointman Tactical Robot and Inuktun Services' Versatrax 300, can easily fit in closed quarters. The tunnel that the Border Patrol shut down last month, for example though it was equipped with electric lighting, ventilation fans, and wood shoring was only 3 feet and high 2 feet wide. It spanned a whopping 481 feet, the largest tunnel discovered in Nogales by the Border Patrol.
The robots' ability to travel through areas where the air is unsafe to breath for extended periods is especially valuable in Nogales, AZ, whose popularity with drug smugglers is due to its sewer system, which is easily accessible from the adjacent city of Heroica Nogales, Mexico."
(Score: 5, Funny) by gallondr00nk on Tuesday February 25 2014, @08:51AM
March 2014:
The US Border Patrol has abandoned its use of the Versatrax* 300 robot, used to infiltrate tunnels used by drug smugglers, not long after spending $1 billion on the project.
Mr H. Anslinger Jnr was quoted as saying: "The cartels new use of steps and other obstacles of 90 degree inclination has halted our progress."
A consultation on manufacturing Daleks as tunnel infiltration units has also been shelved.
(Score: 5, Funny) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday February 25 2014, @09:00AM
Meanwhile, Mexican drug cartels have started using stolen and re-purposed remote control robots to safely transfer drugs across the US border.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday February 25 2014, @09:08AM
March 202x: aerial drones were used for some time [fusion.net] in patrol and seek-an-destroy mission for drug smuggler robots. However is only a matter of time before the budget allocated to border patrol mission becomes insufficient for sustaining the operation, given that smuggler robots are low tech and much cheaper to produce. There's a strong push for the Congress to reconsider the drug classification and, more general, the anti-drug legislation.
(Score: 5, Informative) by girlwhowaspluggedout on Tuesday February 25 2014, @10:11AM
Soylent is the best disinfectant.
(Score: 5, Informative) by mcgrew on Tuesday February 25 2014, @11:11AM
Excellent comment, well modded. I especially liked the reference to Anslinger [wikipedia.org], who was the one responsible for marijuana being criminalized.
At the time, Anslinger was head of the narcotics department and wanted more money to fight heroin. So he made up a new "threat" -- the evil marijuana. Nobody cared if that was illegal, nobody smoked it. Nobody but blacks, Mexicans, artists, and musicians, and who cares about them, anyway?
If you want to see an unintentionally hilarious movie, go to archive.org or gutenberg.org and find Reefer Madness, an anti-pot propaganda movie Anslinger got filmed (IIRC he's in the beginning of it talking about the evil weed).
Pot was outlawed because of a lie. Why should I respect any laws that come out of bald faced lies? Why should I respect any law at all in such a country? I'll respect the law when the law respects me.
Free Nobots! [mcgrewbooks.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 25 2014, @12:06PM
It was more than just a lie: One of the horrible effects of pot cited by Anslinger was that it caused "upstanding white women to consort with Negroes".
The War on Drugs has always been an exercise in institutionalized racism. Opiates were made illegal because of racism against Chinese-Americans (particularly in San Francisco). Alcohol and tobacco, being drugs of choice for white people, were kept legal.
And of course this continues today: When rich white 19-year-olds are busted for pot possession, the judge tells their parents and makes them go to a rehab program while leaving their criminal record clean. When poor black 19-year-olds are busted for pot possession, they go to jail and have a drug conviction on their record for the rest of their life (which also legalizes discrimination against them in employment, housing, government services, and voting rights).
Every task is easy if somebody else is doing it.
(Score: 1) by weeds on Tuesday February 25 2014, @02:08PM
In honor of Harold Ramis:
"I guess it's just a matter of putting 10,000 gallons of water down there." (look out gopher!)
Get the strategic plan going! [dev.soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by TK on Tuesday February 25 2014, @04:15PM
In the case of the tunnel mentioned in TFS, that would be closer to 22k gallons.
(2ft)*(3ft)*(481ft)*(.1337 gal/ft^3)=21,589 gal
Depending on the depth, it might collapse before you get 10k in there.
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
(Score: 1) by weeds on Tuesday February 25 2014, @06:09PM
(It's a line from the movie)
Get the strategic plan going! [dev.soylentnews.org]